


run far from all you've ever known

by essektheylyss (midnightindigo)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Late Night Conversations, for so long it feels like you can't stop or ruin every friendship you've made?, shared issues, to the only friends who've willing to care about you mostly unconditionally, yeahhh...., you ever lie about every facet of your personality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:34:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24065155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightindigo/pseuds/essektheylyss
Summary: It's easier to breathe in the crow's nest. There aren't any expectations that high off the ground.
Relationships: Fjord & Essek Thelyss
Comments: 8
Kudos: 96





	run far from all you've ever known

**Author's Note:**

> prompt fill for @freckledmccree on tumblr, which was for fjord and essek content. it's wild to me how acutely specific some of essek's shitty personality traits mirror members of the m9 because... damn. this is specific.
> 
> title is from second child, restless child by the oh hellos!

While they’re at sea, he spends most nights on the deck of the ship.

It is a harsh place for him during the day, with the sun straining his eyes, even with something over his head. At night, he can lay in the crow’s nest, somewhere he does not venture in the sun, and watch the stars. Often, he is alone.

It seems he will be alone tonight, though he can hear a few members of the crew shuffling down on deck, the tortle’s bagpipes wheezing as he shuffles along on his watch. It has been hours since he spoke to anyone, and sometimes that is preferable, rather than trying to answer to whatever the whims of his friends may be. He is very used to living alone, and though he is often grateful that that is no longer the case, there are many times in which he simply finds himself overwhelmed by the attention that it takes, being apart of a family such as his.

He is simply not used to being with people this often. He feels less and less like he needs to mask himself around them, the longer they spend together, but it is still tiring when he spends so much time concerned with how he thinks he should act. It is an old habit, one that will not be dismissed so simply.

It would be pleasant, if he could wash it away, but even all the seas cannot wipe that impulse clean.

The ropes leading to the crow’s nest strain and groan, and he sits up straight, waiting to see who might be joining him now.

A green-toned shadow appears, hair swept back by the cool night air, and Fjord gives half a smile. “Hey, sorry to intrude, you don’t mind if I—“

“Not at all,” Essek offers, pushing back against the lip of the wood to make space. “It is, after all, your ship.”

Fjord chuckles darkly, more to himself than Essek, and takes a seat across from him. “Nice night.”

“Yes, it is.” Essek closes his eyes, lets the breeze muss his hair. It’s been growing longer, and he hasn’t decided if he trusts anyone else to cut it correctly—Beau has been shaving the sides when she cuts her own hair, but he has been hesitant to let anyone touch the rest. 

Besides, it’s pleasant to feel the wind rush through it at night.

“You seem, ah, peaceful, up here at night. I didn’t know if it was an issue if I disturbed that.”

Essek smiles, eyes still closed. He feels peaceful, and somehow when Fjord asks for permission to join him, it doesn’t feel like that has changed. “No, no. I… find it easier here.”

“Find what easier?”

He blinks now, finding Fjord’s eyes in the dark. The man has never struck him as particularly clever, but he is certainly astute in his own way. It catches Essek off guard sometimes, the different ways he sees intelligence in this group of people. It reminds him that not all kinds of intelligence are the same, and none are better than others.

It’s not something he felt the need to learn as a child, and now he finds himself surprised by it. He wonders what kind of grace he might’ve extended to some of his family members, others in the court, if it was something he’d accepted before.

He wonders what kind of grace he might’ve extended to himself, for his mistakes.

“Breathing,” he finally answers.

“Ah,” Fjord nods. “I think I know what you mean. No one you think you have to be, up here.”

Essek fixes him with the sharpest stare, eyes like a pair of stars in the darkness. His vision at night is better than Fjord’s is, better than anyone’s in the group, and he can see the man fidget when he stares. “Perhaps. Who do you think you have to be, beyond the crow’s nest?”

“Oh, well,” he peers toward the horizon as he thinks. “Around here? Captain, usually. Off the ship, I don’t really feel the need to lead, exactly—there isn’t really a leader—but here… it’s a little different. The rest of them aren’t used to being on the water. It’s a different world, to them. I’m the only one with any experience for it.”

Essek drags his knees to his chest to lean on them. “I suppose I understand that. It has been… difficult, adjusting to whatever you all may have thought of me in Rosohna.”

“Yes, well, it’s a different dynamic, I suppose. There, you had responsibility, and at least some level of power. Here, you’re—“

“Nothing,” Essek says with a wide smile, sharp as a snake bite, and Fjord shakes his head quickly.

“You’re not _nothing_ ,” he offers in exasperation, and Essek exhales, letting go of his instinctive self-deprecation. “You are a member of the crew. You’re… you’re part of the group, just as much as I am.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“You remember how I—“ Fjord swallows hard, then switches his voice and mannerisms so quickly Essek almost misses the transition. “I talked like this,” he drawls, in the accent that Essek remembers from when they first met. “And I came back one day and I talked like this instead.”

“Yes, I remember. I merely assumed—“ He’s not sure what he’d assumed, only that there’s a time and place to ask questions and he hadn’t seen an opening at the time. “I am not unused to adopting different personas. I am not unused to surrounding myself with those who do.”

“I felt like I had to, you know? To be respected. And no one know—well, I think Caleb knew, after a while, but… even then, it was like…”

“Like it was something you had to see through.” Essek nods, the back of his head resting heavily against the wood. “I understand.”

“Is that why you didn’t tell us? About the beacons?”

Essek laughs through his nose. “Well, treason is a far worse offense than hiding your face.”

“Legally, sure.” It’s hard to remember before, now, before his chest ached with regret and the breadth of his folly was laid air, and it’s so, so hard to forget. “But among friends? I don’t know that it is.”

Friends. The word drags the breath from him like gravity, even now. “Remaking oneself in the eyes of one’s friends is…”

“It certainly feels like a betrayal, yes.”

“Yes.”

“They have grown to care about the person they believe you are,” Fjord says. “And changing that, there’s always a question of what makes someone love you.” 

Essek still wishes he knew the answer to that. Why this group had waltzed in and tore everything he’d built down stone by stone. Why it makes him writhe to think of the way they’ve deconstructed his nature, dragged him along to this strange in between. Like drifting listlessly at sea, he is not quite the man he was before he met them but he has not yet embraced who they seem to expect him to become.

“There is an… expectation,” he hisses through his teeth, head bowed. He can’t look at Fjord too closely without worrying that every further word he speaks will warrant being thrown from this height. In fact, every conversation he has with one of his friends feels a little like that—like he is walking a thin line that can be cut at any moment.

He is at their mercy, he knows. They _know_ him, something he had avoided with anyone for so long. 

“You… adopted a persona. You did not simply construct the one you lived with. I have been… every horrible thing you think of me, I have been for over a century. I have not known anything else.”

“I don’t think horrible things of you.”

“If I am not _that_ , then I don’t know what I am at all. I don’t know what it means to exist in my skin, in fact.”

“When I… changed,” Fjord says slowly, and he looks as though he was not quite equipped for how existential this conversation seems to be getting, “I had nothing. No magic. No abilities. A bit of strength, but even then…” He rubs his arms like he’s hugging himself. “And my friends gave me their weapons, to defend myself. Caleb… Caleb trusted me with fire, and that is not an easy thing for him to do.” 

Essek nods; he has seen Caleb’s tenuous relationship with fire, though he does not understand it. It is not a story he has been trusted with. 

“They told me that I still had a place with them, weapons or not, no matter what I sounded or acted like. And that is what you have to learn for yourself. But even though there isn’t something physical we can offer you, as easily as they handed me those weapons, it is what we are trying to do for you. You can… figure out what you want to be, here. Who you want to be.”

“And who do _you_ want to be? Here, you are the captain—is this a role that you wanted? Or did you simply seem like the person who could handle it best?”

Fjord grins. “I was the only person who had been on board a ship.”

“Well, I do not know how to run a ship. So it is rather difficult for me to find out who I want to be.”

“What, you need a role? A job?”

“I need to feel… useful. Like there is a reason I am here.”

“Well,” Fjord says slowly, mulling it over. “We don’t have a second mate. And I think it would do wonders for your relationship with Beau to be in a position where she got to boss you around.”

Essek snorts. “That seems like a dangerous proposition.”

“Too dangerous to take?”

“No,” he smiles, and sits up so he can lean forward on his knees and hold out a hand. “I would be honored to lean to be your second mate. Captain.”

With a grin, Fjord leans forward and shakes his hand. “I would be honored to have you.”

**Author's Note:**

> honestly, these two are such a good combo of people who could talk through some shit (making deals with the devil???) that I may write another chapter to this.
> 
> thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed, let me know what you thought!


End file.
